Picador
Pablo Gargallo
Spanish, 1881–1934
1928
A wrought-iron sculpture of a picador’s head in which Gargallo abstracts and assembles curved and flat metal planes to suggest a hat and fragmented facial features while leaving voids for shadow and air.
The first thing that hits you is the wide, flat brim slicing the space above a mask-like face made of bent, cut sheets of dark metal whose edges and hollows play light and shadow to imply eyes, nose, and mouth.
Working within a Cubist vocabulary, Gargallo translated pictorial fragmentation into three dimensions by welding and shaping metal sheets to emphasize silhouette and negative space, helping open modern sculpture to industrial materials and planar abstraction.
Medium
Wrought iron
Dimensions
9 3/8 x 13 1/2 x 7 7/8" (24.7 x 34.2 x 20 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of A. Conger Goodyear
Accession
151.1934
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
